The original Sri Lankan, says the Ramayana
It’s difficult to picture Barack Obama or Nicholas Sarkozy chatting with Osama bin Laden over a cup of tea. However, heads of state and foreign ambassadors have routinely met and discussed with the leaders of a decades-old terrorist outfit responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Rarely has the world witnessed an enigma like the Tamil Tigers (formally the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE). Despite being named a terrorist organisation by the EU, India, and the United States among others, the Tigers have also enjoyed reciprocal relations with the very nations that marked them as terrorists. Unlike most other terrorist organisations, the Tigers are not synonymous with religious sectarianism – indeed, their story lends itself to romanticism; a desperate people take up arms to free themselves from the oppression of the state, not unlike the fight for American independance. Born out of a period of youthful protest and nationalism, the LTTE and their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, rose to challenge the Sri Lankan state and even India as their fight for independence drew on through the decades.
The Sinhala-Tamil divide in Sri Lanka dates back to a time when most European states had yet to acquire their own identities. The island of Sri Lanka had acquired a predominantly Buddhist profile after the conversions started by the Mauryan Emperor Ashok – however, there has also been a near-constant influx of Hindu Tamils from South India since around the same period (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2008). In addition to this religious divide, the Sinhala and the Tamils have been ethnically divided; the Sinhala are descended from the same Indo-European groups that settled along the Gangetic Plain, while the Tamils are brethren of the Dravidians of South India. Over the millennia, various Indian Tamil empires exerted their influence upon Sri Lanka and furthered the development of Tamil culture while regulating the majority Sinhalese to a more disadvantageous position. Upon colonization, this changed – and after independence, it was the Sinhalese who inherited the power in the nation.
Since independence, the Sinhalese-dominated government granted favourable status to those of Sinhalese descent while institutionally discriminating against those of Tamil descent (BBC, 2008). The passing of acts like the Sinhala Only Act of 1956 and the later implementation of the Policy of Standardization, which effectively acted as a bulwark to curb Tamil admissions in Sri Lankan universities, led to the rise of a spectrum of pro-independence Tamil groups (BBC 2008). The formation of the Tamil United Liberation Front and subsequent overwhelming Tamil support for the creation of Eelam led to the riots of 1977, where hundreds of Tamils were killed (Economist, 2008). The state of Ceylonese Tamils had passed boiling point – the disenfranchised Tamil youth began banding into militarized political groups – the forebears of the Tamil Tigers.
The LTTE was founded in the mid-1970s by their spectre of a leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran (BBC 2008). Prabhakaran managed to unite various pro-independence, mainly student-based organisations under the Eelam National Liberation Front and proceeded to root out any Tamil groups that refused to join his association. However, it was only after the LTTE ambused and killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers and the Sri Lankans committed the atrocities of the Black July pogrom. where thousands of Tamils were ruthlessly butchered (Encyclopedia Brittanica), that the Tamil people flocked to the idea of an independent Tamil state – Eelam – and recognised that the LTTE was the group that would deliver this state.
What followed was decades of civil war – each side responded to the other’s atrocities with atrocities of its own. The Indians were drawn into the conflict, and the Tigers’ infamous suicide bombing unit managed to assassinate Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi – the beginning of the international shunning of the organisation. Prior to Indian intervention, initally meant to be for peacekeeping, the Indian state funded the Tigers through associates in Tamil Nadu (BBC 2008). Following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, however, India pressed the international community into recognizing the Tigers as a terrorist outfit. Until recently, however, this status still meant nothing, as various UN missions, most famously led by the Norweigians, consulted with the Tigers’ Eelam as a legitimate state, alongside the Sri Lankans’ own nation.
This all changed in the past two years, as Sri Lankan leader Mahinda Rajapakse has managed to completely undermine the Tamil Tiger power-base in Northern Sri Lanka, beginning with the capture of Jaffna and continuing to the point the conflict is at today, with the Tigers in a state of political collapse (BBC 2009). With foreign funding cut off, it seems that the end of the Tigers’ era has finally arrived. Now, it is time for the Sri Lankan government to avoid the mistakes that caused this bloody conflict to begin.
The Sri Lankan government must right the wrongs that it has made in the past if it hopes for a permanent, peaceful solution to the Tamil situation. Sri Lankan Tamils have developed a unique culture, different from the Sinhalese culture yet also different from the culture of Tamil Nadu. This independent culture must be adopted along with that of the majority Sinhalese – the pluralism of ancient times, where Buddhist and Hindu, Sinhala and Tamil could live together, must return in order for the island to function as a nation. Sri Lanka is Sanskrit for sacred island. It is time that Mr. Rajapakse’s government made this fractured nation live up to its name.
February 14, 2009 at 11:43 pm
M.I.A. beleives that there is a genocide of Tamils, and since she is the lone Tamil is the North-American spotlight, she thinks that it is up to her alone to bring this genocide into the light with her.
Just an interesting little useless tidbit for ya.
Oh, and I agree, the goverment should speed up and fix the nation so that I can go visit a nice 5-star resort there please.
February 15, 2009 at 12:01 am
Happy? My name automatically showed up as Megahenhan.
I’m definitely going to look more into this – juicy stuff for assignments.
February 26, 2009 at 9:18 am
When Prabhakaran started the LTTE it was for all the right reasons – the Tamils were given a voice. But Prabhakaran held absolute power and that became a recipe for disaster. Prabhakaran and the Tamils who believed in him turned into thugs – forcing people to pay large sums of money, kidnapping children and turning them into child soldiers.
SriLanka under the new leadership has managed to root out the LTTE. But it is treading on thin ice and has to be certain that there are no atrocities committed and the common Tamil is protected in order to prevent the birth of another Prabhakaran in the future.